30 day otp challenge: Shepley
by boethiah
Summary: Title pretty much covers it. Thirty oneshots with different themes focusing on a pretty stellar couple.
1. Holding hands

Ashley has been with others, of course, but nothing has quite been like this. Others have been clinging to every stolen second, every desperate embrace in hidden corners, every kiss laced with worry that this one might be the last, or this one, or this one.

Shepard is nothing like that. She knows that every time she gears up she might be heading to her death at Saren's hands and the destruction of all life in the galaxy, but she still doesn't press her body against Ashley's when they share cover in the field, doesn't try to protect her from enemy fire in the least. That could have put Ash off, caused her to doubt how genuine Shepard's feelings are - if it wasn't for the way the other woman takes her hands.

It happens rarely - Shepard isn't the sort to show much physical affection - and when it does happen there is no thumb slowly caressing the back of Ashley's hands, no reassuring squeeze. Still, there is a promise there, a promise that means more than breathy kisses and words fill with equal amounts of lust and anguish over a potential loss, a promise of something real and lasting once they can afford taking some time to themselves.

When Shepard holds Ashley's hands like that, the Gunnery Chief believes more than ever that they'll make it.

xxx

a/n: this is actually the first time I write shepley, which is stupid because they really are my mass effect otp. hopefully this challenge will help me get to know ash even better!


	2. Cuddling

Shepard isn't the kind of person who cuddles. She's direct, goes straight to the point and when she desires your affection you know you'll get a cheesy line, a lopsided smile and a no-nonsense kiss. The only time she's soft and gentle is when you're sad, and you think that she is displaying inexperienced awkward caution rather than comfort on those occasions but you've learned to accept this, treasure the few kisses and slightly lopsided smiles and you don't really expect more than that.

But when you gaze out the window of Starboard Observation with her one day, expecting nothing but silence once you've both said your piece about the state of the galaxy, the arm that suddenly rests around your waist and the cheek that leans against your hair breaks a few of the assumptions you've made about her and you smilingly think to yourself that you could expect absolutely everything of her and she'd still give you more than that.


	3. Watching a film

Ashley knows all too well that reality can be far more extraordinary than fiction.

She tries to lose herself in films - classics from the very beginning of human film making, the latest turian action flicks, crime fiction and soul-shattering romances - but they can never make her feel like a few months on the Normandy did. The antagonists are never as truly complex as Saren, the setbacks never as frustrating, the choices never as hard as they were when she helped save the galaxy.

And the heroes... they're never as outstanding as Shepard. They'll have something in them, sometimes; that triumphant look in their eyes, that kind of authority in their voice, that fire setting them apart but it's never all of it. Never all the little pieces that made her so extraordinary and the thought that the universe will never see someone like that again causes Ashley to fold in on herself with rib-tugging exhalations

(but her eyes stay dry because there are no tears left to shed)

and she curses herself for not defying the last order Shepard gave her.


	4. On a date

"Come on, Shepard, don't tell me the saviour of the whole damn galaxy can't deal with a meal on a restaurant", Ashley says with laughter in her chocolate and sienna coloured eyes. Shepard sighs, shrugs and allows the ghost of a smile dart across her own lips, like a lizard slipping away from its sunbathing spot on a rock.

"Too many variables here", she replies as her eyes take strange roads across the open spaces and crowded tables, noting the position of a pair of hands here and the bulge of a pocket there.

"Yeah, well, if anyone's about to attack you they'll have me to answer to." Ashley places a hand at the small of Shepard's back, pushing her towards a secluded table and smiles when the other woman chuckles and allows it. Of course, should anyone really attempt to take either of them down Ash knows that they'll both protect each other just as much as they'll trust the other to take care of herself. It spells a strange sort of comfort to her and while Shepard sits down across from her and accepts the menu from an asari dressed in white she traces her CO's features with her eyes. They wouldn't invoke any special emotions in a casual observer not knowing it is Commander Shepard, although most people know her at first glance these days, since she's hardly conventionally beautiful despite the long dark eyelashes and startlingly green eyes. But they cause Ashley to want to expand on her already verbose range of emotions because _love_ is too simple, something that belongs in poetry and films as an agreement to live in passion and mutual understanding for each other's flaws or as an abstract longing.

The feeling of Shepard's fingers brushing against Ashley's despite the former not being big on public displays of affection is so different from what she thought love was before, and it's not even because of the Reaper threat looming on the horizon.


	5. Kissing

Her lips are soft like old paper or recently fallen snow and you melt into them, lovingly tracing the shape of her mouth with your own and breathing in her smile. She tastes a little bit like the ink in ballpoint pens and you could kiss her every moment of every day you have left in this galaxy just to attempt to understand the poetry that exists there, although you are not eloquent enough to express this even to yourself.

You lie with her breath in your face, coiling down your neck and collarbones, seeping into your heart and before she drifts off into a momentary sleep you catch her mouth with yours again, lips tumbling over each other like gazelles running from a lion before you sink into a gentle rhythm together. Her fingers find your hip, yours are tangled in the hair she always keeps in a bun otherwise but glide down to rest at the nape of her neck as the passion from earlier subsides even more and you just exist together for a moment before you have to get up and go to your final confrontation with Saren.

Pushing those thoughts away you sigh, letting go of her lips and kissing the constellation of beauty spots on her face instead, feeling her exhale against the space on your neck where the clavicle meets the throat and it is nothing short of a tragedy at this very moment that the galaxy depends on _you_.

-x-x-x-

_(author's note: it's after midnight, i have an excuse for posting two only hours apart. (also I was thinking of the prompt and couldn't keep away because ugh kisses between these two is everything I want) (okay not everything becayse hnng))_


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